The distributional impact of increased school resources: the Specialist Schools Initiative and the Excellence in Cities Programme

Taylor, J and Bradley, S and Migali, G (2009) The distributional impact of increased school resources: the Specialist Schools Initiative and the Excellence in Cities Programme. Working Paper. The Department of Economics, Lancaster University.

Abstract

This paper estimates the impact of the Specialist Schools initiative and the Excellence in Cities programme on the attainment of secondary school pupils in England. The focus is on their relative impact across gender and ethnic groups. Using pupil-level data, we find that both policies have had positive effects on test score gain but that these effects vary substantially between boys and girls and across ethnic groups. Both policies have been more effective for boys than for girls. The Excellence in Cities programme is estimated have had a positive impact on the test score gain of ethnic minority pupils but not for whites, who have benefited only from the Specialist Schools initiative. The greatest impact is estimated to have occurred for schools which have had specialist and EiC status simultaneously.